18 September 2006

Mateship, my arse

This bloke, Jack Marx, does one on the Sydney Morning Herald blogs, and has put two cracker posts up in response to both Howard and Beasley's stinking piles of bilge on mateship the same paper last Friday. Thats a link to the second one - the originial is good too - but I realise not everyone can surf at their leisure between 9 and 5. I checked this guy out when he started and was suspicious that he was just obnoxious as a style marker, not as a real talent. But I'm starting to warm to him.

Also, the eds at SMH placed Hugh Mackay in the same edition, in a rather timely fashion. He argues that we mouth our Australian "values" as basically the same as those of the French revolution - liberté, egalité et fraternité - in the form of "the fair go", "egalitarianism" and the dreaded "mateship" - but in reality our values are Materialism, Pragmatism and Nationalism. He should know he listens to thousands of people every year talking about this stuff. Just goes to show you don't need a funny hat, dreadlocks or a motorbike to be a radical thinker. Thank god.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hmmm, Jack Marx is a lovely example of blurring the line between journalism and advertising. His SMH blog was created by SMH in response to requests from Absolut vodka (who you'll notice are always an ad in the sidebar) who were looking for a way to reach savvy consumers.
See here:
http://www.crikey.com.au/Media/20060822-The-blurring-of-editorial-and-advertising.html

and here:
http://www.leftwrites.net/2006/07/22/celebrity-tells-blogger-yeah-whatever/#more-156

BSharp said...

Oh yeah, I remember reading that too now! Guess that means yr Aunty B falls into the Absolut demographic. Damn. I haven't had a vodka in.. ooh.. weeks. Mmm.. vodka.

Gotta go now and pour a drink so I can write hunched over my computer, slugging hard spirits, spouting angry rhetoric about National values, and cultivating a week's worth of stubble. On my bikini line, I guess.